NEET stands for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.
NEET is conducted for admissions to MBBS and BDS courses offered by all 271 medical colleges, 138 run
by governments and 133 under private management. These colleges offer over 31,000 seats for MBBS courses
according to a press release from MCI in the month of August 2012. Recent news items appeared in the print
media indicate
that 355 medical colleges and 41000 MBBS seats are available with MCI.

Why NEET?

NEET would reduce hassles for students appearing for multiple medical entrance exams, numbering to 25 in India.
Additionally, giving so many exams creates lot of financial burden for the parents since each examination involves
expenses like Application Fee & commuting to appear for the entrance test in various cities/at various test centres.
So NEET will avoid unnecessary wastage of time, effort & money.

Moreover, multiple exams also pose the challenge of preparing for different syllabi and patterns
for students. This further increases the stress among students.

Impact of NEET

NEET shall replace

All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT – the national level medical entrance test for MBBS courses), which till 2012 was used for admissions into 15% seats of all government medical colleges except that of in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir.

All individual MBBS entrance exams, which were being organized individually by state or colleges themselves.

NEET Merit List & Rankings (Proposed)

NEET body (i.e. CBSE) shall provide:

National as well as State level ranking or merit list will be prepared for all the appearing candidates.

Rank Usage for NEET qualified students: (a) National Rank: A student can use National Rank to take
admission in any of the NEET affiliated MBBS colleges
in India. 15 % of the total seats available nationally will be filled using this rank

(b) State Rank: A student can use State Rank to take admissions in the remaining 85% of seats in any of
the affiliated
colleges in the state from here he/she has done class XI & XII or holds a domicile.

The pattern of NEET

NEET-UG will be a single stage test based on objective type questions. The test would comprise of
Physics (45 questions), Chemistry (45 questions), Biology (90 questions from Zoology & Botany).
Duration of the test would be three hours and total number of questions would be 180.

It is a single phase exam with national ranking.NEET will be conducted by CBSE.

NEET 2013 syllabus

Given the multitude of syllabii - both of state and central boards - the Medical Council of India(MCI)
recommended the syllabus for NEET UG 2013 after reviewing the syllabi prepared by the various state boards,
CBSE,NCERT and COBSE. The MCI also considered different
areas of the medical field before finalising the NEET UG syllabus.

Two goals would be achieved by the MCI - one - candidates from no particular board would be at an advantage and another, there would be uniformity across the country.

The Union health ministry has informed state governments that their existing reservation policies would not be disturbed under the proposed scheme and state wise eligibility merit lists will be prepared for the respective state authorities to admit students for admission in accordance with their admission criteria in the institutions located in the respective states.

The qualifying criterion has been changed from percentage of absolute marks to percentile to ensure that no seat remains unfilled. Minimum eligibility criteria are 50 percentile in the NEET.

Other information

Among the states that was against the introduction of NEET in 2012 included West Bengal Maharashtra, Assam,
Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa, Tripura, Karnataka, Maharashtra and West Bengal now
showed readiness to join NEET from 2013-14.
But AP sought exemption for two years, saying they would join from 2014 -15.